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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29910786">for your thoughts</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionight/pseuds/lionight'>lionight</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dr. STONE (Anime), Dr. STONE (Manga)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Petrification (Dr. STONE), Asagiri Gen Whump, Drugs, Dystopia, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, Heavy Angst, Human Trafficking, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, Kinda, M/M, Recovery, Serious Injuries, Slave Trade, Trauma, Whump, not a great tag to start off with but bear with me, not sure, probably, title is a work in progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-03-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 19:48:17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,052</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29910786</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionight/pseuds/lionight</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It should've been a regular commute home.</p><p> </p><p>Or, Senku sees a familiar face and helps in whatever way he can.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Asagiri Gen/Ishigami Senkuu</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>38</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>for your thoughts</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>please read the tags! you can probably already guess that this fic is going to be rather heavy. no major character death, no underage, but there's some pretty graphic descriptions of injuries in here (at least by my standards) and i haven't decided whether there will be rape/noncon yet. there won't be any between senku and gen, that's for sure, but between gen and other characters? who knows :)</p><p>there are mentions of drugging, overdosing, and sex slaves in this chapter, as well as medical jargon and procedures. please proceed with caution and don't be afraid to sit this one out! personally i don't think it's too too bad but that's just me. have fun! enjoy the gen angst</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It should’ve been a regular commute home, just like any other day. Senku should’ve left work at 6, taken his usual train back, and been home by 7.</p><p>...but his usual commute would have to wait; he needed some unusual materials for his next experiment that were only found in a different ward entirely. The sixth ward, to be precise, a part of the city where the buildings meant for visiting were covered in shiny black glass, and the buildings meant for living were crumbling on the pavement; where girls waited at the curb for no one in particular, and stragglers clumped together between buildings, shadows purposely obscuring any distinguishing features.</p><p>Senku was horribly out of place here; he hurried through the busy streets, shoulders hunched and face down, hoping no one would look twice. His hands were shoved in his pockets, less to keep them warm from the chilly mid-winter air, and more to keep himself compact, <em> together. </em> Momentum was key.</p><p>A strangled cry from one of the alleys stopped him in his tracks, though, and the uneven hair that he spotted sealed his fate. A large hand dragged the man back inside the building from which he had just escaped and slammed the door closed behind him, leaving an ominous puff of breath-vapor behind.</p><p>Senku glanced up at the sign of the building. <em> The Wishing Well </em> was spelled out in gold flashing letters, bordered by a choppily-animated coin flipping through the air. Senku swallowed. It was basically a new-age slave market, one of many. They were dangerous and staunchly ignored by most of the city’s officials. The last city council member who spoke out about it, a confident, newly-elected woman, had turned up dead in her home less than a week later. The police announced it as a suicide.</p><p>Senku let his legs carry him inside before his brain had the chance to take over. Materials could wait.</p><p>///</p><p>It’s nearly nine now, and Senku’s just dropped over 10 million yen.</p><p>He’s escorted into one of the back offices immediately after the bidding (but not before the staff confirm that he doesn’t intend to make any more purchases. Senku could hurl at the thought.) There’s at least one man, each roughly the size of a house, waiting inside every door frame. Every time Senku walks past one, they look him up and down and get a hint of a smile on their faces. He sets his jaw and keeps moving.</p><p>
  <em> Momentum is key, after all. </em>
</p><p>Senku races through the remaining paperwork as fast as he can after making a quick call to his bank to confirm rerouting the absurd amount of money. They hesitate slightly, and Senku briefly wonders whether or not they know exactly where this money is going. Even if they did, they most likely wouldn’t do anything about it; Senku’s fairly wealthy, after all, so this isn’t <em> completely </em>out of the blue. It’s almost an expected behavior of those with capital, like buying designer drugs or a private jet, except this time he’s acquiring an entire human being. </p><p>It takes a little time for them to prepare Gen, so Senku’s forced to sit in the dimly lit back room, nose twitching at the heavy scent of cigarettes and leg bouncing anxiously. He hopes Gen is cooperating.</p><p>When Gen finally does come out, flanked by two large men (which seems highly unnecessary, considering that <em> Senku </em> could probably best him in a fight at the moment), Senku feels like he’s just been ejected into the cold, airless abyss of space. It’s completely different from seeing him up on a stage; here he can see the freshness of his wounds, every vibrant bruise like a neon sign on his pale, grayish skin. Tears leak from the corner of his blackened eye. Gen reflexively tries to blink them away, but his eyelids are too bruised to move more than a couple millimeters. His pupils are dazed and unfocused, his head lolling to one side slightly. His bloodstream is probably saturated with drugs right now; they’ve got him doped up so that he’s docile for handling and transportation.</p><p>The sight of this normally proud person beaten down into submission and servitude has Senku’s stomach churning. If he wasn’t up and limping around, Senku would’ve guessed he was a day too late; Gen looks dead where he stands.</p><p>Before Senku can say anything, the man standing to the right of Gen grabs Gen by the scruff of his neck and forces him forward so he’s bent at the waist. Gen’s stringy black hair hangs in front of his face, obscuring his expression. “Thank you for your kindness. I belong to you now, so please take good care of me.” His scratchy voice comes out stinted, <em>practiced.</em></p><p>“Sure,” Senku mutters, hoping beyond hope that his voice doesn’t waver too much and give him away, not when he’s already come this far. “Let’s go.”</p><p>///</p><p>They take one of the company’s courtesy cabs back to Senku’s place. The driver offers Senku champagne when he first gets in, to ‘celebrate his purchase’. Senku manages to hold back a grimace and promptly declines, so the ride back is completely silent. Gen is slumped back in his seat like a puppet without strings, his arms hanging haphazardly at his sides. When Senku glances over at him, Gen’s one usable eye stares straight ahead but holds no life behind it. His mouth gapes loosely open too, and Senku feels panic rise in his chest for a few seconds when he can’t see Gen breathing at all, praying that he didn’t just die in the seat next to him (a tragedy that’s not uncommon in the slave trade), but finally regains a normal heart rate when he spots the subtle rise and fall of Gen’s bruised chest. Shit, how many drugs do they have him on?</p><p>Whatever he’s on, it’s affecting his motor skills pretty severely. Senku curses himself for having a house with so many steps; he’s not very strong himself, so the trek up to his front door, one arm tucked around Gen’s waist so he doesn’t topple over, is ridiculously difficult.</p><p>He takes a quick blood sample, which frightens Gen almost to the point that Senku calls it quits; after about 15 minutes of trying to gently coax Gen out of the shaking ball he’s curled himself into, Gen’s energy seems to be depleted, and he complies with a faraway look in his eye. Doing this to Gen when he’s not completely conscious sends a new wave of guilt through Senku, but this is necessary work; he’s willing to bet money that Gen’s on some kind of sedative, probably a barbiturate, maybe amobarbital or phenobarbital, and almost definitely too high a dose. On their own they might be alright, but if he’s on any additional muscle relaxants or sleeping pills it could be game over. Gen’s shallow breathing and extreme drowsiness are too similar to signs of an overdose for Senku to ignore.</p><p> His hands move a little faster.</p><p>///</p><p>After all absolutely necessary testing is finished, Senku quietly guides Gen to the guest room he’ll be sleeping in. Senku makes the executive decision to hook Gen up to some monitors, at least for the first couple nights. With everything that’s happened (the clues to which Senku is still piecing together), he can’t be a hundred percent sure that Gen won’t pass during the night. If his heart rate starts tanking, Senku will be notified by the beeping.</p><p>And notified he is - Gen starts to flatline for the briefest of seconds, but that's all it takes for Senku to fly over to the other side of the room and frantically prep the Narcan. The tone of the ECG is getting impossibly louder, ringing in his ears until it's inseparably attached to the image of Gen, overdosed in his guest bedroom, his blood both literally and figuratively on Senku's hands. <em>This is it, </em>he thinks. <em>This is the first time I've failed someone like this. What are you supposed to do when your high school crush dies after you buy him at a fucking slave market? Call your dad?</em></p><p>He must've bumped Gen just right, though, because one of the snaps dangles off the bed and Gen's heart rate returns to normal after he reattaches it. Senku steps back from the bed, hands raised like he's surrendering. His heart pounds in his ears louder than it ever has before. It was a false alarm - thank <em>God</em> it was a false alarm. Considering that he's not a licensed physician and has next to no medical training, he did fairly well. When it's for real, though <em>(if</em> it's ever for real, he corrects himself) he'll do just as well. Ten billion perfect, absolutely, for sure. He’s not letting Gen slip away from him that easily.</p><p>Honestly, Senku’s incredibly lucky that he’s done so much personal medical testing in the past; he doesn’t know where he’d be tonight if he didn’t already have so much equipment on hand. He doesn’t know where <em> Gen </em> would be if he was unprepared, and frankly, he’s trying not to think about it.</p><p>The bedroom is simple enough; a matching bed set, complete with a queen bed, a dresser, two nightstands, and a lamp, all wood in a stormy gray color. Yuzuriha and Taiju usually use this room whenever they stay with him. Now with all the medical equipment, the room is slightly busier, but it’s comfortable.</p><p>Where does that leave Senku, though?</p><p>He fidgets for a little bit by Gen’s bedside, the latter sleeping motionless, completely unaware of Senku’s dilemma. He’d strongly prefer to at least sleep in the same room as Gen in case of an emergency, plus he’d hate for Gen to wake up alone in a strange place after everything he’s gone through. If he panicked too much he could hurt himself or rip out his IV. Would Gen really mind? It’s not like Senku’s planning on violating him or anything, as would be commonplace during his first night with a new owner. Senku has nothing but good intentions.</p><p><em> Of course, </em> his brain whispers to him. <em> That’s why you just dropped almost 11 million yen on a whim buying the guy you’ve had a crush on since you were 15. As a slave. But you’re one of the good ones, right? Nothing but good intentions here. </em></p><p>Actually, he decides, no more critical thinking for tonight. He’s already exhausted and tomorrow is going to be rough, so he needs whatever sleep he can manage. After examining Gen again, he scurries off to the bathroom, brushes his teeth, changes into his pajamas, and makes it back to the guest room in record time. He’s definitely not changing Gen’s clothes, it’s way too late for that now. Hopefully the clothes they’ve got him in (black dress pants and a white cotton shirt, now stained with old, browning blood that they failed to bleach out) aren’t too uncomfortable. He didn’t come with any shoes or socks, which Senku feels bad about not noticing until now, but it’s one less thing to worry about.</p><p>Carefully, so as not to disturb Gen, he peels back the covers and slips into bed next to him. Moonlight floods in through the window and cascades across his bed-partner's face, and Gen’s skin takes on an almost ethereal glow. It’s hard to appreciate his beauty, though, when the bruises are so deep that they raise and distort Gen’s skin, when his black eye is weeping pus and tears. It’s hard to look at Gen at all, really. The broken man that lay across from him is a far cry from the pretty, popular boy that Senku took a liking to way back in high school.</p><p>So Senku gives Gen one more once-over, glances at the monitors beeping above him, and turns over. It's midnight now. He sets a vibrating alarm for two hours on his smartwatch so it doesn’t wake Gen up; he’ll check to see if any adjustments are needed then. For now, though, he squeezes his eyes shut as tight as possible and wills his mind to put aside the images of today’s horror that have been flashing behind his eye sockets, at least for a little bit. Just so they can rest.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>aaand there we go! i have no plans whatsoever for this fic, so updating might be a tad sporadic. not to bribe you or anything, but i might update faster if you comment ;D</p><p>for reference, senku spent about $100,000 on gen.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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